Governance Systems in community

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In our community, the central outer collective factor that seems to be yielding success is our governance model of using Quaker process for decision making, as well as the fact that most the participants are experienced and trained in this model. So perhaps the meta-strategic success factor is for participants to have and be comfortable with a governance system, as opposed to be also building a governance model at the same time as they are building a community. However, the specifics of this governance model is that it is not highly legalistic, and searches for collective truth as it is divinely revealed integral to the governance model, which seems to have particular benefits to creating a community.

A second strategic aspect of success is the collective work on a “common house.” We interviewed a number of communities before starting about whether we should build our common house before or after we built our own individual houses. The feedback was clearly that either communities wished they had built the common house first, or were happy that they had. I think that the meta-pattern here is that establishing some common resource first, provided a pattern of working together around that concrete resource that carries through later when people are working on their more individual resources. But of course we haven’t completed our own houses yet, so I’ll have to report back later.

A third strategic aspect of success is location. In deciding on where to build the community, we did lots and lots of research, and in the end we settled on drawing a circle around Powell House (a Quaker retreat center) and deciding to buy land no more than a 15 minute drive from there. Our thinking was that we would deeply benefit from the symbiosis of being physically near enough to the institution that there could actually be interaction. The meta pattern here is that communities cannot exist in a vacuum, and that in building one you are wise to pay attention to the physical closeness to the resources that will sustain you. In our case the resources are the human and spiritual ones.

Prevailing legal and regulatory systems thwart community

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This is hard to answer because many of the things that seem to thwart the success of the community may simply be the wind that provides the force that gives our wings lift. The huge obstacle to success as we would measure it, is the prevailing legal and regulatory system. For example, we were prevented in doing many things that would have felt closer to our objectives by government regulations. In our area we are not allowed to have communal water and septic systems without putting in place exceedingly expensive technological and legal solutions to perceived problems. Thus all our houses have to have individual wells and septics, which are ecologically quite stupid. This external environment thwarts our goal to ecological design as well as thwarts us by taking up huge amounts of energy trying to figure out creative solutions that live within the law and still get us some of our goals.

Another example is the zoning laws, which prevent us from siting houses on the land according to a holistic permaculture approach, and instead require us to do so from an individualistic property-line set-back, minimum acreage, and road-frontage perspective. So, I’d say that the main thwarting force is not paying enough attention to the existing legal structures, so that you can find some way to work within them.

The other huge thwarting force is money. The above legal structures that make things needlessly expensive, as well as the mortgage lending system that leads us into wage slavery, are very difficult to overcome. In our community we have spent considerable time working on mechanisms of self-financing so as to minimize the exporting of our resources to the profit-making banking institutions. Of course all this work has been good for the process of community building, so perhaps as I mentioned at the outset, this dynamic is part of the success of the community. But, without a strong commitment and without the governance patterning resources mentioned in question 1, these external forces could easily have torn us appart, and still might.

Community is not the end in itself

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A particular shared meaning that is central to our success is that we are all quite clear that community is not an end in itself, but a means to other ends. This puts the possibility of failure of the community in different perspective, because it wouldn’t be the failure of the ends, rather it would a passing of one form of the means to achieving those ends. We have clearly stated the ends that we see our community as a means towards, and that clarity itself is important because forms a self-selection membrane that will ensure a certain starting point of unity.

For our community the purposes are: – to increase the mindfulness, spiritual focus, and God-centeredness of our lives by finding and living near others who share these goals and thus will reinforce, on a daily basis, our desire to live in worship – to strengthen our family life both by creating a “village” setting in which to raise our and others’ children, and by caring for our elders. This includes an emphasis on leaving behind cultural obstacles that interfere with providing the time and energy that a healthy family life requires – to examine carefully our participation in the national/international consumer economy and begin to build the critical mass necessary for viable business networks and sources of goods and services more appropriate to our Quaker testimonies – to focus on a lifestyle that is environmentally sound and that attempts to give back to our planet as much as is taken from it – to include a good measure of joy, fun, outreach, and service in our lives as we strive to meet these objectives.

Another success factor is built our governance model. Quakerism, and quaker-process relies heavily on and provides very strong tools for the development of the Inner Collective We. Because “Sense of the Meeting” decision making is all about manifesting in the written word the emerging sense of the collective of divine truth, again our process is the key success factor. But in this question it’s not so much the particulars of it (i.e. taking minutes, having a clerk, etc which are the forms of the process) but rather it’s the experience that we have during that process. Because the experience of the Inner collective is generated by the process, it is central for our community.

Shared internal assumptions and beliefs

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In our case, the basic thwarting force is the shared internal assumptions and beliefs we’ve inherited from the prevailing culture. Some examples: Financial affairs are private. If somebody does something for me, I’m in debt and owe them something in return. I must be self-sufficient. Birthday’s involve birthday-presents. I have the right to have pets. Land is something you can own. etc. etc. There are tons and tons of things we just assume because they are encoded in our language and our culture, our collective inner being, that make it difficult to live in community. In the United states this is particularly the case because of it’s long history of independence and individualistic spirit. None of this is to condemn that spirit which has incredibly far-reaching and deep consequences to the positive development of humanity. However, when you are trying to go the other way, it puts up huge barriers.

Diversity and inner work as a success factor

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The key success factor for the Inner Individual quadrant is diversity. Our community has
individuals with a wide range of inner sense and strengths. Some are visionaries, others detail people, other emotional people, others intellectuals, others humorous, those who want risk, and those who guard against too much risk, etc. From what we have read, and from our own experience, the key thing is to have the variety of strengths. From what we have read, one of the largest contributers to community failure, is, for example, too many idealistic visionaries, with not enough detail process people.

The second success factor is that individuals are willing to and in the process of doing inner work and being self-reflective. Thus the inner aspects of the project, our fears, our embarrassments, our prejudices, are up for inspection and change in the communal context and not taken as a given.

Insecurity the biggest thwarting inner force

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In my estimation, the biggest thwarting inner force seems to be insecurity that creates fear. That insecurity generated fear leads to lack of communication, lack of listening, etc, all as protective devices. This then leads to factionalism, confusion, work not getting done as feelings are massaged, etc. All of us are broken and unhealthy in some regard. But the average overall internal health has to be high for the community to succeed.

Individual skills knit community

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I’d have to say a success factor is related to a sufficient variety of skills, abilities and proclivities. We have members who can do physical brute labor, and who have skills as builders and constructors, and we have members who are overweight and have no building skills, but instead are brilliant at thinking through logistical details and make tons of phone calls to keep the community knit together.

Physical illness thwarts community

Physical ill-health seems to take a large tool on the energy supply that is available to be put into community. We have members who are dealing with forms of addiction which thwart them. But I’m not sure whether these are outer or inner forces.